GameStop, Hedge Funds and Vaccines… that’s my summary!
This week has been a wild one for the stock market. Why buy boring-old ETF’s when you can just purchase a failing retail company for a 1000+% return, right? I mean, who would have thought? Can you imagine if this had happened to Sears or some other dated retailer, out of touch with their customers? Absolutely crazy.
If you’re not following, haven’t turned on a radio or interacted with humans this past week, a quick summary of the GameStop / Wallstreetbets events are summarized below.
Enjoy!
GameStop Short-Sellers Lost $1.6 Billion in a Single Day as Reddit Traders Rebelled Against Them | Markets Insider
So a bunch of folks on Reddit decided last week that they’d flip the switch on a few hedge fund investors by driving the price of certain targeted stocks upwards. An organized effort was made to purchase specific securities of heavily shorted companies, upset rich folks and hopefully profit at the same time. It seems to have worked. (At least for now). Read the full scoop and backgrounder in the article above.
The GameStop Fiasco Proves We’re in a ‘Meme Stock’ Bubble | Marker
Easy access to no-commission trading, low-interest environment, plus new investors deploying their stimulus cheques, are likely what is helping fuel markets at this point. Allowing them to continue making new highs almost daily, it seems. People questioned a bubble before the ‘COVID correction’, but we’ve now recovered and easily surpassed that point in less than a year, not to mention, during an economic crisis. It begs the question that if this isn’t a bubble, then what is? And when will it end… With low-interest rates and free-flowing money, it’s anyone’s best guess at this point.
In Graphics: The UK Vaccine Supply Chain | Financial Times
Now for the important stuff, vaccine discussion! There’s been a lot of chatter the past week or so about how the vaccine rollout is not going as smoothly as planned in Canada, as there are now delays on shipments from Europe. I thought this was a fascinating visual piece on how the vaccine supply chain works in the UK and how the development, approval, production and distribution process happens. Also related, here is a cool website where you can follow worldwide vaccine doses administered by country. Canada is not doing so hot.
Check my latest article on the subject of GameStop FOMO and Sticking to Your Investment Strategy. Also, if you haven’t already, visit my latest articles and updates on the homepage.
Have an awesome weekend!
